Tour-de-force

PATRIC STANDFORD listens to recent music for solo flutes, played by Nancy Ruffer

The American born Nancy Ruffer has achieved an unrivalled reputation for
championing new music and encouraging composers to explore the broadest
possible range of technical experiment with the flute family. She
has remained in London ever since her post-graduate study days at the
Royal Academy in the late seventies, and has worked with ensembles specialising
in contemporary exploration, ensembles like Matrix, the Almeida, Apartment
House and Topologies.

It is no surprise then that she can find over an
hour of new flute music for her solo CD, which is an impressive
tour-de-force. The wise listener will no doubt dip into this anthology
rather than listen non-stop, for continuous play-through may be too
confined; there is a limit to how much contrast in musical material
this succession of 'bird-song' can produce.

Brian Ferneyhough starts
at the top with his Superscriptio and remains up there exploring
predominantly the high register. James Dillon is represented with two
pieces, one the substantial Sgothan, twenty four short episodes which merge
into 'a polyphony of clouds', and the brief Diffraction. Jason
Eckhardt, a New York composer, has devised Multiplicities an
attractive flow of gentle lines with staccato punctuations.

Michael Parkin's Elegy
[listen -- track 8, 4:10-5:15]
has a strong oriental atmosphere and
introduces some vocalization counterpoint, and Chris Dench involves
multiphonics in his wide ranging and flamboyant Caught breath of time,
a piece specially written for Nancy Ruffer. Michael Finnissy
attempts to capture his exploration of Australian Aboriginal culture
in Ulpirra, a quiet and atmospherically haunting piece for alto flute.
Maïastra, written by Simon Holt in 1981, is a large mythical bird,
a sculpture by Brancusi, and this ten minute piece takes flight
impressively, leaping in sweeping arcs through space. There is a
short piece by Henry Cowell too, musical explorer and friend of
Charles Ives. The Universal Flute
[listen -- track 3, 1:50-3:15]
with characteristic Eastern influence, was originally written for shakuhachi.